Ibragim Todashev, 27, was shot by the FBI in Florida yesterday after he stabbed an agent during questioning on his possible involvement with Tamerlan Tsarnaev in a triple homicide that took place before the Boston bombings, local media reported.
Todashev's father, Abdulbaki Todashev, told Kremlin-funded RT television that his son knew Tsarnaev when he lived in Boston.
"It turns out that they simply went to the same gym together," he told the channel by phone from Grozny. Tsarnaev was a keen boxer while Todashev was a mixed martial arts fighter.
The Todashev family moved back to Grozny from Saratov in central Russia when their son was a student, his father said. His son asked to go to the United States to practise his English.
"Then when he went over, he liked it and he said: Can I stay here?"
His son apparently had a ticket to fly to Chechnya this month but then changed his plans, he said.
It was not clear whether Todashev was suspected of a role in the bombings.
Todashev's father insisted his son was not a violent person.
"If you don't provoke him, he is a very calm person and he would never attack anyone in his life."
Nor was he extremely devout, he said.
"He is ordinary, like all Chechens, he followed Islam and that's it."
He also said that Todashev was recovering from an operation and was "learning to walk again" and would not have been able to take part in the bombings.
Todashev attacked an FBI agent with a knife and was shot, investigators said in an account that his father questioned.
"How could he attack a policeman with a knife especially, as they say, if there were five or six of them in his house?" he asked.
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